The Maximalist
THE RISE AND FALL OF TONY O’REILLY
Gill Books
To my family, Aileen and the children,
Andie, Aimee, Millie, Zach and Harry.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue: The man who had everything
Introduction: A spectacular past, an even more spectacular future
A note on shares
SECTION 1, 1906–1989: From humble beginnings
Chapter One: Secrets and lies
Chapter Two: The flying Irishman
Chapter Three: The starting point
Chapter Four: The worst turns out for the best
Chapter Five: The modern face of Heinz
Chapter Six: Becoming Independent
Chapter Seven: Crisis management and damage limitation
Chapter Eight: Like father, like son
Chapter Nine: A lasting legacy: the Ireland Funds
Chapter Ten: The Heinz model of management
Chapter Eleven: The search for liquid gold
Chapter Twelve: Making the news
Chapter Thirteen: Loss and change
SECTION 2, 1987–1999: Legend and branding
Chapter One: Empire-building: the rise of Independent Newspapers
Chapter Two: Love, again
Chapter Three: ‘Buy, borrow and buy’
Chapter Four: Absolute power at Heinz
Chapter Five: Playing the long game
Chapter Six: Into Africa
Chapter Seven: An intimation of mortality
Chapter Eight: Slings and arrows
Chapter Nine: Taking full control
Chapter Ten: Stepping down and moving on
Chapter Eleven: ‘For services to Northern Ireland’
SECTION 3, 2001–2006: A man for a new century
Chapter One: Best foot forward
Chapter Two: Dialling up the numbers for Eircom
Chapter Three: Win some, lose some
Chapter Four: Extracting the maximum from Eircom
Chapter Five: Favouring old media
Chapter Six: Falling out of fashion
Chapter Seven: The case for The Independent
Chapter Eight: All the government’s fault?
Chapter Nine: Ringing more changes at Eircom
Chapter Ten: The sound of breaking glass: the truth about Waterford Wedgwood
Chapter Eleven: A question of trust
SECTION 4, 2006–2009: A threat to all he’d built
Chapter One: Exits and new strategies
Chapter Two: The politics of big business, the business of politics
Chapter Three: Corporate provocation
Chapter Four: Watershed
Chapter Five: Collapse
SECTION 5, 2009–2015: ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same …’
Chapter One: The battle lines are drawn
Chapter Two: A new order emerges
Chapter Three: A shot to nothing
Chapter Four: A very public humiliation
Chapter Five: Insults heaped on injuries
Epilogue: the life of a maximalist
Images
Select bibliography
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Author
About Gill Books
PROLOGUE
THE MAN WHO HAD EVERYTHING
Tony O’Reilly strode into the twenty-first century, an Irishman apart. He seemingly had all that any man could have wanted and, not only that, more of those things than anyone else possessed. He had more money than any other living Irish-born person, making him a billionaire. He had more power than any other unelected citizen, as owner of the lion’s share of Ireland’s non-State-controlled media. He had been a sports star and was still lauded for his star turn over 40 years earlier as a youthful international Rugby Union player, whose individual try-scoring records as a member of the British & Irish Lions team remain unbroken. He’d had a serious health scare in the mid-1990s, but he’d recovered from it and showed few signs of slowing down the exhausting pace at which he lived. His charisma was enormous, his access to the rich and famous ready, his circle of friends and acquaintances stretched across the globe. He was feted for his public-speaking abilities, his ability to engage, enthral and entertain. He was a captivating private conversationalist, full of amusing stories when it suited, well able to dominate discourse with the power and range of his intellect if that was more appropriate; there seemed to be little about which he did not know or could not offer an informed opinion. He had the ability to make people in his presence feel like they were the most important thing in the world at that moment, if he chose to confer his benediction. His accurate recall of events was astounding and of literature was learned.
While he may not have retained the striking good looks of his youth, women still swooned in his presence. He was happily married, for a second time, to Chryss Goulandris, a Greek shipping heiress and Fifth Avenue, New York native who, reportedly, was even richer than he was. He had six adult children, three of whom worked with him in family-controlled businesses although, in an apparently rare setback, one was on the point of leaving. He had a cordial relationship with his ex-wife, Susan, an Australian who now lived in London, so much so that she and Chryss would occasionally meet at family and social functions and he would jokingly introduce them to others as ‘my wives’. Neither visibly demurred at the description. He owned many trophy properties: there was a 750-acre stud and mansion called Castlemartin and luxury homes in Dublin city centre, west Cork, the Bahamas and Deauville, in France. He stayed in the most expensive suites at the St Regis Hotel in New York, at the Berkeley in London or at Le Bristol in Paris whenever he visited those cities. He had full use of a corporate jet to take him around the world.
He was an iconic figure to some, a hero who had achieved in business what no Irish person had achieved before, who had been a trailblazer for what now seemed more commonplace. He was lauded for his charitable endeavours and generosity to people in need. Damn it, he could even play the piano to performance standard and sing and have people ask to hear more because they genuinely liked it, not because they were ingratiating themselves with him. He did indulge a lot of kowtowing, but this was hardly surprising: a man who played such a big game naturally had an ego to match.
It wasn’t enough. It was so much, and yet it wasn’t enough. If O’Reilly was probably the most significant non-political figure in Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century – if you leave out the artists whose work he often championed and bought or quoted – he was determined that during the twenty-first century he would build on that reputation, would copper-fasten his legacy in Ireland’s history books. His need, what some would call his greed, and not just for money but for regular approbation, was naked and unabashed. In a 1999 interview with Businessweek magazine he admitted freely that he was ‘a maximalist … I want more of everything’.
Not everybody loved or admired or respected him, however. His self-confidence was interpreted by some as overbearing arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and sometimes a crude use of coercion to get his way. Some actively despised him, not just for how he behaved but for what they perceived him to be, for what he believed and for what he symbolised, and his greatest critics were often his fellow Irish citizens. His critics, often in hushed tones, sometimes more strident, accused him of abusing his power, particularly with regard to his media interests. They muttered that he cut corners to accumulate and maintain his wealth and deceived the gullible along the way, being mindful of the laws of libel to which he might resort. They found him, despite everything, shallow. They wondered if he was a chimera, lacking substance, especially when they perceived that in championing brands, O’Reilly was really hyping his own, creating an illusion from which only he would truly benefit. His critics saw him as vain, some regarded him as a narcissist.
This angered O’Reilly greatly. He wanted to be loved, just as he wanted to be rich, respected and feted. He was a self-made man, after all: he had not inherited material wealth from his parents, enjoying their love and their willingness to pay for a good education to allow him fulfil his talents and ambitions, but no inheritance to match those ambitions. He had enjoyed some outrageous good fortune along the way, even if he put his success down to his willingness to work as hard as he could and his cleverness in decision-making and pursuing personal connections. Why couldn’t people set aside their envy and jealousy, give him the credit he had rightfully earned? He was a tall poppy, yes, but why did others want to cut him down?
Sometimes he brought his critics to Castlemartin, for one of his legendary parties, in an effort to seduce and convince; others he punished by exclusion. The parties held at his mansion – which was far removed from the relatively modest circumstances in which he had been brought up on the northside of Dublin, less than 50 miles away – were a proud display of prosperity, patronage and place. This was where he commanded, like a modern Irish chieftain, a High King of culture and ostentatious wealth, as he presided over his mansion, stud farm and 750 acres of land. Before his time, this place had been the seat of Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Now, O’Reilly, a common Catholic, had fashioned an aristocracy all of his own making.
The prosperity was clearly his; guests were there to acknowledge and admire the very aura of his material successes – the artworks, the architecture and the antique furniture. He dispensed the patronage; visitors accepted his invitation if they were family, friend, employee or third party and they were expected to appreciate their status in being granted this form of approval. Their place was something invitees were expected to understand; while they were regarded as being of some value or accomplishment, they were reminded none-too-implicitly that they were in the presence of the main man, in his manor, on his terms.
O’Reilly had always loved a big party, especially one where he was the centre of attention, something he’d been used to from an early age. The invitation to a ‘dinner dance’ or ‘supper’, requesting the pleasure of your company and that of a ‘plus one’ (usually already nominated by him), typically came in the post on an embossed card that bore the Castlemartin crest. An invitation by telephone suggested that you might be a late addition, but that was not an insult; no doubt you were not the only one. In the early years of his ownership of Castlemartin, bought in 1972 when he was just 38 years old, the year before he took control of Independent Newspapers (IN), invitations were in the names of Tony and his wife, Susan; after they divorced, the invites to the resumed parties held from 1991 onwards came from Dr AJF O’Reilly and his new wife, Chryss; from 2001 onwards they were from Sir Anthony and Lady Chryss O’Reilly, as befitted their newly acquired status. The reply went to the public relations (PR) company Murray Consultants, which oversaw the staging of each event on O’Reilly’s behalf.
There were a number of parties most years, but the biggest was usually that held on a Saturday evening in August to coincide with a sponsored horse race, The Heinz 57, which would take place at the Phoenix Park track the following day or, after it closed, at Leopardstown in County Dublin. Up to 300 people would be hosted in an enormous, specially erected marquee attached to the side of the 28-room manor, which, although it often catered for dinner parties for up to 80 people, could not cope with these expanded numbers without the extension. The guest list was designed to impress, to make attendees feel as if they belonged among an elite. It comprised politicians, businessmen in O’Reilly’s employment and not, sports stars old and new, poets and other writers, and some of his personal friends gathered and kept over the years. There were regulars, occasionals and one-off invitees, the men all dressed in lounge suits and the women in stylish cocktail dresses, apart from the rare occasions when black-tie was required. Otherwise, O’Reilly would almost certainly wear his favoured uniform of a dark navy-blue pinstriped power suit, a powder blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, a subtle yellow or green elephant-print tie with matching silk handkerchief in his breast-pocket, and always black leather shoes, all impeccably tailored to demand, clothes that clearly cost thousands of dollars or euro.
The guest lists were a ‘who’s who’ of Irish life and beyond. It would not be unusual to see the Taoiseach of the day and the leader of the opposition at the same party, rivalries cast aside for one evening. All of the taoisigh, from Jack Lynch to Bertie Ahern, had attended a number of times, with the notable exception of Charles Haughey, an old friend O’Reilly fell out with because of their greatly different approaches to political dispute and terrorist activity in Northern Ireland. A minister for finance of the day was also likely to make the cut, local TD Charlie McCreevy being a particular favourite during his term of office (1997–2004), as well as a smattering of other ministers who might be in favour and others of whom a favour might be needed, if not now then possibly in the future. Foreign political leaders also visited, although sometimes at other times of the year for the smaller, more intimate dinners of just dozens of people. Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Peter Mandelson and Henry Kissinger were among those who came to dine and stay, as well as other worthies from Britain, Australia, Canada and the USA. When Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain at the time, before he became Prime Minister, came to Dublin, it was on the corporate jet that Independent News & Media (INM) and Waterford Wedgwood shared and that was largely maintained for O’Reilly’s use. A phone call was made to the Taoiseach’s office and Ahern’s staff organised that a police escort whisk Brown through the busy traffic to his Kildare destination, even though he was not fulfilling any public engagements.
Then there were the celebrities: Hollywood actors like Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and Sean Connery. Many rugby internationals made the cut, largely because of O’Reilly’s previous fame as one of the game’s most successful players during its amateur era. These guests were mainly Irish, but from different generations: from the 1948 Grand Slam-winning captain Karl Mullen to 1970s stalwarts like Ray McLoughlin and Fergus Slattery, to 1980s heroes like Hugo McNeill and Willie Duggan, some of whom O’Reilly had played with, although many not. His best friend, the former rugby international Jim McCarthy, was always present: he had become one of his key business associates, too. There were many cultural figures: the poet Seamus Heaney, whose work O’Reilly loved to recite publicly, perfectly mimicking Heaney’s northern accent, was among those who attended regularly, his support for the Ireland Funds (the charitable organisation O’Reilly founded with American businessman Dan Rooney) and its aims gratefully acknowledged.
The events were stuffed with businesspeople, most of whom were in the employ of one of O’Reilly’s many companies: INM, Waterford Wedgwood, Atlantic Resources (and when it was gone, its off-shoots, Arcon and Providence Resources), Fitzwilton and, of course, the American food giant Heinz, where he made the bulk of the money that was reinvested in his Irish interests. The Americans saw how successful and lionised the boss was in his homeland. Key executives in his various companies knew whether or not they were in favour by virtue of invitation or exclusion. There were many journalists, too, the editors of his newspaper titles, business-page editors and some respected writers, such as Robert Fisk of The Independent, and Eamon Dunphy, even after he had left the Sunday Independent in high dudgeon over his perception of low standards in the paper, and other admired scribes from non-INM titles, such as Kevin Myers of The Irish Times, before he crossed the River Liffey to the Irish Independent.
Every guest was met at the door by the smiling face and cheery comments of the man who seemed to know everybody who was coming, no matter how seemingly insignificant by comparison to him. He rarely forgot a face or name and often had an anecdote ready to flatter the guest before he effortlessly moved on to greeting the next. He commanded the room, and not just because of his 6 ft 2 in. height. Some people were delighted to be there, thrilled to be part of his court, delighted to stay as late as 4.00am or 5.00am when the sing-song was in full flight at the baby grand piano in the front lobby of the main house. Good wine – a Le Montrachet white or a Château Lynch-Bages red – compensated for food that was usually quite ordinary, hotel-type fare: standard chicken or salmon dishes with some vegetables on the side. It was expected that you would have fun; it didn’t matter if you got a little drunk as long as you didn’t let yourself down by falling down. O’Reilly would be up himself until the small hours, but he would never be drunk. He would sometimes take to the piano himself and sing, and he could do it better than most.
Some guests were somewhat less deferential or impressed, although rarely to his face, feeling compelled to be there by the needs of their job or position, bored by what quickly became to them the sameness of each occasion. Even the music was entirely predictable: jazz pianist Jim Doherty led a trio of musicians who played old standards from an earlier era and either Anne Bushnell or Sonny Knowles did the crooning. One year O’Reilly’s sons, Gavin and Tony jnr, arranged for more contemporary music to be performed as a replacement; their father saw to it that their mistake was not repeated again.
If the guest list was partly designed to demonstrate his standing in Irish society, then the setting gave him the opportunity to showcase his vast wealth, the material expression of his rising in the world. Castlemartin was the lavish bricks-and-mortar declaration of his own improvement, that he now had his own seat, accompanied by a stud farm: the symbolic possessions of a new Irish gentry to replace the old English landlords. ‘There was a day not long ago when people named O’Reilly stood outside a house like this, their noses pressed to the panes,’ he told a Wall Street Journal reporter in the 1970s who was invited to tour the estate.
The house had been purchased from Lord Gowrie in the early 1970s when it was ‘in a condition of stately decline’ due to a combination of being vacant for a number of years and from the depredations of previous tenants, the great rock band of the era, The Rolling Stones, or the singer Donovan. ‘We keep expecting to find blond groupies bricked up in the fireplace,’ O’Reilly liked to joke about the restoration process.
The renovations took years and ‘it cost a fortune, but I think the result was worth the time and money’. The house, originally built in 1713 on two floors, has 28 rooms and is 26,000 sq ft. Architectural aficionados enjoyed features such as the elegant cut-stone front doorcase with bolection mouldings surmounted by a swan-necked pediment, surrounding a teal-blue front door. They noted how the front hall was panelled in plaster and ornamented with Corinthian pilasters. An inner hall was tiled, with a marble fireplace, and was dominated by a cantilevered dual staircase, under which there was a Bechstein baby grand piano and an Irish harp, and two doors to the downstairs toilets. There was a Picasso to admire and a giant canvas of O’Reilly, painted by Derek Hill.
The staircase brought the visitor up to the 10 spacious en-suite bedrooms, two of which were in the attic. Back downstairs, the house had six reception rooms, all overlooking the River Liffey. The drawing room had an Adam fireplace and the dining room retained all of its original plasterwork, with the walls covered in fabric and floor-to-ceiling shimmering gold silk curtains, all bathed in the glow of an enormous Waterford Crystal chandelier. O’Reilly kept a formal and luxurious study on this floor, dark green and lined with shelves of books – mainly historical and particularly involving warfare – where he did his reading, either for work or leisure, to the sound of the music he loved, either at the partner’s desk or on the more comfortable sofa seating. There was a long breakfast room, with a glass wall and a panoramic river view, and an Aga in the kitchen. The bulk of the furniture was clearly antique and expensive and the house was carpeted with many luxuriously soft rugs. It was an expensive building to maintain and heat: there are more than 100 solid teak windows throughout the house. The Coach House – where the likes of Mandela had stayed – had been converted to provide five bedrooms, and there was a large swimming pool surrounded by guest apartments. There was also a vast solarium and cavernous salons. There was a simple log cabin down at the riverbank, which held a hot tub that was given to O’Reilly by his second wife as a birthday gift. The main feature of the boardroom, which was located near the Coach House, was a table that seated 28 and a lectern for making presentations; many of his Irish executives made their presentations there over the years.
There were photographs, pictures and paintings of O’Reilly all through the house, many from his rugby-playing days, of him with his family and with various business and political associates, all of them portraying landmark occasions in O’Reilly’s life. There was one of him playing tennis at the White House with the elder, first former President George Bush, signed: ‘Tony, greetings from the White House Field of Combat – George Bush.’ There was a photo of him in casual attire showing Kissinger the expanse of the Castlemartin domain. A photo of Paul Newman had the caption: ‘Okay, it’s settled, you’ll replace Redford in Butch Cassidy II.’ There was a giant painting of him in a pinstripe suit with a bottle of Heinz ketchup. There was a framed Irish Independent page from 1973, announcing that Tony O’Reilly had won control of the group for £1,100,000.
O’Reilly loved showing off Castlemartin: guests wandered reasonably freely, to admire the architecture and décor and to gape at the paintings. Sometimes he, or one of his assistants, would conduct a tour before everyone sat to eat. His art collection was one of Ireland’s most expensive, with the highlight from 2000 being a work by Claude Monet. The collection featured work by Walter Osborne, William Ashford, William Sadler, Sir William Orpen, Camille Souter, Seán Keating and William Mulready. One of his former editors, Andrew Marr of The Independent in London, recounted once sitting down for an important meeting with O’Reilly and remarking that a painting hanging on the wall over his shoulder looked like a Turner; O’Reilly replied smilingly, ‘It is a Turner.’ He was one of the first of the modern generation of Irishmen to collect paintings by Jack B. Yeats, all of which were displayed prominently.
There were horses everywhere too, as Castlemartin was a substantial stud farm, and was so even before O’Reilly met Chryss, for whom this was her main interest. It had expanded over the years by acquisition of neighbouring farms and was now 750 acres in size, three times what he had purchased originally. It was limestone land, 20 acres of which had been devoted to amenity and shelter belts, divided into 53 paddocks fenced with stud rail.
Before the guests arrived at the house they passed through a magnificent set of wrought-iron entrance gates that dated from the eighteenth century but that were updated to allow for electronic opening and closing, controlled from a security room in the main house over a mile away. The guests then drove along a road with lush green paddocks on either side, some sheltered by the large number of giant oaks and chestnut trees. There were cattle on display, a distinctive herd of expensive Belted Galloway and what he described as the best collection of Charolais in Ireland, which he boasted that people came from all over the country to see.
It hasn’t always been like this. In the 1970s Lanning Roper, an acclaimed American landscape architect and garden designer, was given the task of creating a garden and of altering the contours of the parkland to admit a better view of the Liffey as the river makes a dramatic sweep towards the house, and then turns to flow away from it. Roper planted a beech hedge ‘forecourt’ at the entrance to the house, open on the side of a magnificent formal lime avenue, which was planted on axis to the front door 200 or more years ago.
And yet for all the tours and talk and pride, O’Reilly was rarely there to enjoy it all. He was a visitor to his own home. He had admitted this to his friend and long-standing INM director Ivor Kenny, in a 1986 interview for Kenny’s book In Good Company. ‘Business is tyrannical,’ O’Reilly had lamented. ‘One achieves economic independence, but not the freedom that should go with it. I have been in this home [Castlemartin] one day since August. It’s a great home and it means a lot to me. It says a lot about me, about my drives and ambitions, about my pride in Ireland and about my pride in being Irish: waging war on the international front and coming home to my fortress, so to speak. Yet I don’t get time to enjoy it.’
He would enjoy use of the house for almost another 30 years, but in late 2014 it, along with most of his other material possessions, and the things he held dear, would be gone from him, taken in the most undignified of circumstances. He would blame others, malign fate and, occasionally, himself, but the circumstances of that loss beggar belief and add to the fascination generated by this man. Friends and foes watched in astonishment as he made mistakes a man of his capabilities should not have made, and others took advantage of that. He was chased by banks to repay his debts, his money apparently entirely gone. He disappeared into near-seclusion as his legendary self-confidence evaporated and he no longer wanted to see anybody. It was a long way from north Dublin to Castlemartin, and it has been a long way from Castlemartin to where he is today: a man of means with no means to resolve his financial difficulties. This is the story of how and why.
INTRODUCTION
A SPECTACULAR PAST, AN EVEN MORE SPECTACULAR FUTURE
The turn of the century was heralded by a party that O’Reilly did not attend personally, but that he still enjoyed enormously because of his corporate involvement in it. O’Reilly’s attention – like an estimated billion other television viewers worldwide – was arrested by the celebrations at Times Square in New York, where a ‘time ball’ was lowered from the roof of One Times Square to mark the Millennium. The piece was called the ‘Star of Hope’, and it was made at O’Reilly’s Waterford Crystal plant in Kilbarry, County Waterford.
The time ball creation was loaded with symbolism, befitting the occasion: it consisted of a central circle and a seven-pointed star, the former representing the Earth and the latter the seven continents. It weighed 1,070 lb and was 6 ft in diameter, adorned with 504 triangle-shaped crystal panels, each side 4–5 in. long, 96 strobe lights and spinning, pyramid-shaped mirrors. More than 40 Waterford craftsmen and designers contributed to its design and construction, and when it was shipped from Ireland in November 1999, it was accompanied on its journey to Times Square by the Mayor of the city.
The ball was lowered, starting at one minute to midnight, by 141 ft down a pole, to complete its journey at the stroke of the new century. A proud O’Reilly, who watched it with his wife and mother-in-law and other family members in the Bahamas, saw it not only as a wonderful marketing opportunity for Waterford Crystal – with somewhat typical hyperbole he called it, in publicity released in advance of the event, ‘the zenith of public awareness’ for the brand – but as an event that was, despite its populism, an opportunity for an appropriate display of great craftsmanship and style. As a keen history buff, O’Reilly also enjoyed knowing that in 1907 Adolph Ochs, then owner of The New York Times, had commissioned the first ever ball dropped to mark the New Year celebrations in New York.
At the start of the new century, O’Reilly was nearing completion of an almost 30-year career with the giant American food company Heinz, where he had risen to the top positions within just a few years of arriving from Ireland, and now owned just short of 2% of all the company’s shares. He would announce in the coming weeks that after 27 years as part-time chairman of INM he would take the role on a full-time basis, while simultaneously remaining as part-time chairman of Waterford Wedgwood. He was also about to embark on an acquisition spree, personally and corporately. He knew that the time left to him was finite, but he had certainly not lost his sense of ambition nor his determination to be at the centre of things, for as long as that centre would hold.
Eight months on from that night of worldwide celebration in which Waterford Crystal played such an important part, I travelled to O’Reilly’s château in Deauville, France, in August to interview him for The Sunday Tribune. Our meeting was just a little more than a fortnight before O’Reilly was due to chair his last annual general meeting (AGM) as chairman of HJ Heinz. That wasn’t the only hook for the interview, however. O’Reilly had turned 64 that year, as had two other titans of the Irish business scene, Tony Ryan and Michael Smurfit. I decided to interview all three men to find out their views on the big issues of the day, but also to discover what continued to motivate them as their pensionable years loomed, and why none of them seemed likely to retire.
They took some persuading to participate: a certain degree of scepticism was expressed by all three at the outset about the premise of our engagement. They all seemed somewhat insulted by the idea that they might consider retiring, that my interest might be in their past rather than their future, or that their careers were no longer as dynamic as they had been.
They shared many characteristics, such as an obsessive work schedule, an almost unbelievable amount of air travel, fractures in marital relationships caused by long absences from home (wherever home actually was, because they all owned many properties) and an apparent need not just to have money but to be seen to be spending it, particularly on charitable donations and on houses and art that demonstrated the elevated and enhanced positions they had reached. They were competitive and, according to legend, could be ruthless, albeit to different degrees. They angered differently: when riled, O’Reilly spoke slowly, with an icy calm; Ryan was volcanic; Smurfit was spiteful.
Appearances were very important to all three men. They all spoke and behaved in a manner that emphasised their perceived stature, with accents that had changed as they aged, in O’Reilly’s case to include a mid-Atlantic twang. They were almost always immaculately turned out, dressed in the most expensive of suits and ties, of the type worn by City of London types and other obviously wealthy men. Occasionally, they would be seen wearing expensive cashmere jumpers and slacks as leisurewear; Smurfit often wore golf clothes, the only one of the trio to have a love for the game. Each strived to convey polish, to emphasise achievement.
O’Reilly might have had some extra reasons for sensitivity about the timing of the interview. He had not enjoyed a particularly good press in some parts of the media in previous years. Controversy dogged his final years as chief executive (CEO) at Heinz; allegations were rife of excessive pay for him and of his board of directors being packed with indulgent cronies to facilitate that. His reputation for probity in Ireland had been questioned too, as had his exercise of power in Ireland via his media interests. He had been linked to payments made to a corrupt former minister and a blazing row with a former Taoiseach had been revealed. O’Reilly had been linked, wrongly, to a tax evasion scandal that had engulfed many businessmen and politicians of his vintage and he had threatened to sue The Irish Times to protect his reputation. He had lost in the bidding process to run a mobile phone licence in competition to the incumbent State operator, beaten by a consortium led by Denis O’Brien, a brash and upcoming businessman who was more than 20 years his junior and who was to become one of the most significant figures in O’Reilly’s later years.
At Deauville, O’Reilly delighted in telling me about the provenance of the Normandy house. It was located on the same site where William the Conqueror had kept his eleventh-century castle. ‘There is something piquant about an Irishman living next to the former home of a Frenchman who subjugated the English,’ he said, laughing. But that wasn’t the reason O’Reilly had chosen it. He had asked the estate agent which house had provided the living accommodation for the Nazi commanders in the area during the Second World War. From his extensive reading of the history of the period, he knew they had always requisitioned the best living-quarters in an area during occupation. This was the house he now wanted and was prepared to buy, price undisclosed.
As O’Reilly warmed up over a light lunch of salad on the patio in the bright sun – he explained that he now dieted very carefully as part of his life-long battle against weight gain – he spoke about the efficacy and prurience of the tribunals investigating allegations of corporately funded political corruption; the effect of their revelations on the reputation of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey; the ‘incorruptibility’ of the Irish civil service, judiciary and An Garda Síochána (the Irish police force); the change of Ireland from a political to a ‘consumerist’ society; the ‘casino-like’ nature of Wall Street; the chances that Britain would eventually join the euro to help provide larger markets for its manufacturing output; his perception of reduced respect in Ireland for academic achievement; and the waning influence of the Catholic Church in Irish society. He was well versed and authoritative on all subjects. This was, after all, the character Henry Kissinger had dubbed Ireland’s ‘renaissance man’.
On 12 September 2000 he would attend his last AGM as chairman of the American food giant Heinz, which he had joined in 1971. ‘It will be sentimental to a degree, but I expect that it will be very enjoyable,’ he mused. He reeled off the facts as had appeared in the already published annual report. In 1979, when he had become CEO, the company had sales of $2.5 billion, profits of $110 million and a stock market value of $900 million. Now it had sales of $9.4 billion, profits of $925 million and a market capitalisation of $23 billion. His shares and options in Heinz were worth $270 million at his retirement. He was not in the least shy about repeating any of this.
‘Happily, because of the system we use at Heinz of high-risk, high-reward, many of the people have been greatly enriched. There were 107 millionaires in the company at one stage and at least 30 people have left with over $26 million of option gains. It was a tremendous success for the company to provide that wealth for shareholders and employees. It was very satisfying for me professionally and worthwhile for my friends … A friend once said to me, “always back self-interest because it’s working for you 24 hours a day”. The food industry is not necessarily the most exciting and to get the best out of people it is necessary to incentivise them.’
But he insisted that it wasn’t all about the money. ‘There was also a great human aspect, as the degree of amity, friendship and collegiality that we developed proved that you don’t have to be mean and tough, or mean anyway, to succeed.’
As part-time chairman of Heinz for the previous three years, O’Reilly’s work pattern had altered. ‘The rhythm of my life has changed. When you have worked for a large company like Heinz with 100,000 people depending on your appearance at regular times in their lives and you have to concentrate on budgets, sales figures, businesses to acquire and dispose of, a certain structure evolves around the formal things that you have to do. Now I read more, non-stop almost. I spend most of my day reading, not deciding, not talking to people but reading. I have never had more to read because we’re at a point in technical innovation where we have to try and understand what is happening to us so we won’t get whacked.’
But he wasn’t slowing down, despite previous musings – some disclosed in interviews going back as far as 1986 – about a desire to take a break from business once his time at Heinz ended. ‘The thoughts of a sabbatical have been overtaken by the Internet and new technology and a sense of being underwhelmingly (sic) aware of what’s happening in the world. A sabbatical is not something that I have the luxury of at this stage … But the one thing I do have because of my Irish middle-class background is a firm sense of danger and anyone in business today who does not have a firm sense of danger doesn’t know what is happening.’
It wasn’t just a year for corporate accumulation. O’Reilly was in the business of collecting personal baubles, too. The most spectacular was his acquisition, in May 2000, of a painting by the French impressionist Claude Monet, Le Portail (Soleil), which cost him €24 million. In 1892 and 1893, Monet had painted 27 views of the façade of Rouen cathedral in north-western France. He did so at different times of the day and in different weather conditions. There’s one in the early morning sun, one in bright sunlight, another on a grey day, one at sunset, yet another on a hazy morning. One hangs in the Louvre in Paris, another in the city’s Musée d’Orsay, and another in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. O’Reilly hung his at his Castlemartin estate, a Le Portail (Soleil), a view in midday sunlight.
As a 15-year-old boy in 1951, O’Reilly had travelled with a friend, Frank Turvey, on a cattle-boat from Drogheda to Dieppe and begun a cycle to Paris, taking in as much as they could of the destruction caused by the Second World War. They stopped en route in Rouen and when sitting in a café opposite the cathedral, drinking glasses of Normandy cider, a Frenchman explained the effect the changing light had on the cathedral’s façade and described how Monet had painted more than 20 versions of it. ‘He told us impressionism was about the reality of a building being so, but perceptions of it being quite different,’ O’Reilly told his RTÉ radio interviewer Pat Kenny in May 2000. The more cider he drank, the more impressionist Rouen cathedral became to him. ‘It opened a whole new world to both of us; Monet and his circle created new horizons of wonderment and excitement as they altered the course of viewing the world through art forever more.’
He said his art collection was inspired by such life experiences, and put together on the basis of choice rather than fashion or value. ‘Art is the ultimate democracy,’ he said. ‘It’s about what delights your eye and your senses.’
During our conversation in Deauville, he briefly mentioned the influence of Peadar O’Donnell. Previously he had credited O’Donnell with ‘igniting in me a life-long interest in art, its interpretations, its secret messages and its different meanings’. He said that O’Donnell ‘decoded the paintings of Yeats as he explained to me patiently, then as a 10-year-old, the meaning of a painting called The New Road.’
O’Donnell was an extraordinary character to have mentored O’Reilly as a child and for the businessman to continue to cite at many junctures of his life: he stood for so much that O’Reilly came not just to reject but to despise, and yet O’Reilly’s respect and affection for O’Donnell’s memory remained obvious.
O’Donnell was a staunch republican and Marxist, a leading organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) and an active member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the War of Independence (1919–21). He led many IRA raids on targets in counties Derry and Donegal and rose to the rank of commander of the IRA’s Donegal Brigade. In 1922 he was elected as a representative on the anti-Treaty IRA’s army executive, and in April that year was among the anti-Treaty IRA men who took over and destroyed part of the Four Courts building in Dublin, an action that helped to spark the civil war as well as destroying many valuable records of national importance. Although O’Donnell escaped from the Four Courts, he was later caught by the Free State Army and imprisoned at Mountjoy. He went on hunger strike for 41 days and in 1923, while still in prison, was elected as TD (Teachta Dála, member of parliament) for Donegal. On his release from internment in 1924 he became a member of the executive and army council of the anti-Treaty IRA and editor of An Phoblacht, the republican newspaper.
O’Donnell later split with the IRA because he believed it had not done enough to support land redistribution and workers’ rights. He founded the Republican Congress in 1934 – two years before O’Reilly was born – claiming its overriding aim was the maintenance of a united front against fascism. Its influence was minimal and short-lived. He continued to write and agitate, albeit on the periphery, aided by the use of a large inheritance obtained by his wife, Lile. He was, according to one contemporary, a ‘professional agitator’.
O’Reilly came to know him through O’Donnell’s nephew, with whom he went to school. Peadar Joe O’Donnell lived on the Upper Drumcondra Road on the northside of Dublin, not far from the Griffith Avenue home where O’Reilly grew up. Peadar Joe had been born in New York, but when he was just five years old his father had been killed in an accident. His uncle Peadar and Lile, who were childless, brought him to Dublin and raised him as their own.
In November 1982, the Abbey Theatre hosted a special celebration of O’Donnell’s work. The commentator Fintan O’Toole said O’Donnell was ‘notable as much as anything for being the last surviving member of the executive of the old Irish Republican Army’. Equally as notable was O’Reilly’s speech at the event, lionising his old mentor for the five summers that O’Reilly had spent as a child and teenager in O’Donnell’s second house in Dungloe, County Donegal.
‘He almost reared me,’ O’Reilly said proudly. ‘Peadar was uncle Peadar to me and his wife was Auntie Lil … I learnt how to fish there, how to row and how to drink altar wine.’ These were ‘sunlit days, and both glittering and glamorous as well,’ O’Reilly continued. ‘I remember Peadar’s glittering conversation and the notion that we were both interested in Marx … he in Karl, I in Groucho.’
O’Donnell died in May 1986 and there is no recorded detail of how he felt about his young protégé’s eager embrace of capitalism. But whatever about his accumulation of wealth, it is not hard to imagine that O’Donnell would have been astonished, appalled even, by O’Reilly’s acceptance in late 2000 of an offer of a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and his subsequent request that he be addressed and known as Sir Anthony O’Reilly.
O’Reilly had boasted of his nationality, indeed even traded on it at times. He had founded the Ireland Funds to promote such ideals. ‘I don’t think there was any doubt what the theme in his life is,’ said Kingsley Aikins, who ran the Ireland Funds for him for nearly 20 years. ‘He sees the Irish as one of the great tribes of the world and he’s a leader of it.’ His Irish identity was an element of his personal brand and its marketing; the idea of him as a Knight of the Realm was contradictory, at the very least.
As an independent State and a republic since 1948, Ireland did not merely disapprove of its citizens accepting or using titles from other sovereign states but actively forbade it, with a caveat. Article 40.2.2 of Bunreacht na hÉireann (Constitution of Ireland) states: ‘No title of nobility or honour may be accepted by any citizen except with the prior approval of the government.’ This meant O’Reilly could exploit a loophole if he wished, but only if he was permitted to do so.
The first approach on behalf of O’Reilly was made to government in November 2000. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was told by his secretary, Dermot McCarthy, that O’Reilly was being offered the title as a reward for his ‘long and distinguished service’ to Northern Ireland. The Ireland Funds had raised hundreds of millions of euro in charitable donations for the island, most of which had been spent north of the border: the fund-raisers had acted as a considerable block to the fund-raising efforts of the IRA in the USA and, in retrospect, could be the actions that most firmly secure O’Reilly’s place in Irish history. However, a considerable block of opinion, especially in nationalist circles, suggested that some of O’Reilly’s newspaper titles – the Sunday Independent, in particular – had not been helpful during the peace process that culminated in the signing, by Ahern, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and various Northern Irish politicians, of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which enforced a new political settlement that largely ended terrorism by both nationalists and loyalists.
O’Reilly was in a tricky legal situation. He knew of the constitutional position, but he had an argument ready. This son of a deceased senior Irish civil servant claimed that he had always maintained dual citizenship because he had been born in Ireland prior to its leaving the British Commonwealth in 1949. This meant, he maintained, that he was technically entitled to accept without Irish government approval. However, the regularity with which he, and representatives from the British government, contacted the Taoiseach’s department to seek official permission in the coming weeks suggested that O’Reilly was not quite certain of his legal position and was worried about the public interpretation of the situation were he not to get the required permission and instead act unilaterally.
He had in mind the cautionary tale of what had happened to a rival in the British newspaper market, Conrad Black, at that time proprietor of the Daily Telegraph group of newspapers. Just two years earlier the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien had publicly rebuked his British counterpart, Tony Blair, for approving honours for two British-Canadian citizens, including Black. A major row ensued, in which Black’s Canadian newspapers championed the cause of their master, but Chrétien would not back down. Black renounced his Canadian citizenship.
O’Reilly did not want to face anything like that. Publicly relinquishing his Irish citizenship to accept a British knighthood could have created a public backlash large enough to affect his personal reputation and deliver negative consequences for his business interests. His aim was to have his cake and to eat it: revelling in his Irish citizenship, while holding a British title – just as he boasted of the Irish credentials of most of his businesses while personally remaining non-resident for tax purposes.
To O’Reilly’s frustration, however, Ahern reverted to type when faced with having to make a decision he didn’t want to make. Ahern dithered about doing anything at all. He has never spoken publicly about this dilemma, but there was a combination of personal and political to it. While Ahern had developed close relationships with members of the British government and had shown great pragmatism in dealing with Ulster unionism, he remained a nationalist at heart. The idea of an Irishman taking a British knighthood was anathema. Politically, he was worried about a backlash should the public perceive him as indulging a rich man’s whim, but he was far more fearful of the potential threat, however real, that O’Reilly’s newspaper titles might turn on him should he deny the man what he wanted. On the other hand, he could see the potential for having O’Reilly ‘owe him one’ should he acquiesce: there could be long-term benefits in editorial coverage in INM titles.
Ahern waited until the last moment possible. On the last working day before Christmas, Ahern brought about 20 members of his office staff for drinks at Doheny & Nesbitt’s pub near Government Buildings. McCarthy arrived soon after, seeking a word in private: O’Reilly’s people had been in touch again, demanding a definitive answer. There was now an additional problem: various ministers had gone home for Christmas and would not return for a Cabinet meeting to deal with such a minor matter. McCarthy suggested something remarkable, something done only in the most extreme and important of circumstances: an incorporeal Cabinet meeting, conducted by telephone. Various ministers were called and asked for their approval. Most were surprised, but agreed when told it had been sanctioned by Ahern. O’Reilly was able to happily inform the British that he could accept the title – but he was now in Ahern’s debt.